Posts Tagged ‘India’

After a rather eventful flight (i’ll explain later) I got to my hotel extremely easily at about 8am this morning. The taxi man was there, my bag was there and I was let through without a suspicious stare.

He only nearly killed three people with his mirrorless driving

I was delightfully surprised considering the nightmare stories I read here yesterday that my four pound a night hotel was actually not too bad. It was even better than some hotels in Oxford! Upon my arrival I was instantly upgraded to a lovely double room with air-con and in a lovely shade of pink. I think it was because they had run out of the cheap ones.

Onto the flight fracas – After a delicious mushroom and spinach risotto for dinner (it genuinely was quite tasty, not quite Jamie Oliver more a la Matt Hull) and wasting two and a half hours of my life watching 2012, I decided to try and get into the new time zone, which is randomly five and a half hours ahead, and have a sleep. The next thing I know as I come back round from an hours nap, there is a Gazza look-a-like standing in my leg room area pissed up even more than Gazza on a stag do wearing his sleeping mask and trying to open up the emergency exit, calling the cabin crew motherf*ckers and threatening to light up a fag if they didn’t give him another vodka and coke. God knows how he’d managed to get so drunk so quickly. I’d only managed to neck two double G&Ts and a glass of french dry white. He must have snuck on his own, note to self for next time.

When they eventually managed to calm him down and upgrade him (unbelievable) to the empty World Traveller Plus section he came back to us cattle in The World Traveller section (economy to everyone but BA) and insisted we should all upgrade ourselves to “2nd class ’cause it’s f*cking empty”, I felt like I was on the Titanic in steerage. Although his offer was extremely tempting, especially if they gave into his demand of unlimited vodka and cokes, but no way was I moving from my leg room luxury.

Better than World Traveller Class Plus even with free vodka

Delhi is absolutely mental, dirty and a major hassle. I crashed out when I first got into my bed at a cosy 16 degrees (thanks air-con), woke up three hours later and thought I should probably venture outside. A walk to the end of the road and I encountered a police riot; I thought the hassling tout was lying when he told me to go to Connaught Place the other way because it wasn’t safe. From what I could gather and from what i’ve been told as the word has spread about town, the government decided to rip down some illegal shops. Very exciting. So I took the advice of my con-man friend and walked the long way round. I can’t remember how many random mens’ hands i’ve shaken already today and i was only out for a couple of hours. There was the mobile phone shop owner, the student who got married at 16 from Jaipur and the fake tourism office man that was definitely approved by the Government of India.

I’ve also had my first taste of Indian food, a tasty vegetarian thali that was just as good as Masala Zone and it was only 80 rupees! It seems like i’ve achieved a lot so far so I am going to get back on it and do even more.

Bored of working in London and living for the weekend to see his amazing 18 friends. Myles decided to fulfil a lifelong passion and go travelling. The only problem was he didn’t have any money to go. One phone call later to his lovely bank Nationwide on a dreary Tuesday ... Continue reading →